Tag: European Space Agency
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Soyuz with two-man crew lands safely in Kazakhstan
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION The Soyuz MS-03 spacecraft descends to the landing site in Kazakhstan under parachute. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now Leaving crewmate Peggy Whitson behind in orbit for an extended mission, a Russian cosmonaut and his French co-pilot undocked from the International Space Station early Friday and plunged back to Earth,…
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Live coverage: Two-man crew departs space station, returns home
Live coverage of the Expedition 51 mission on the International Space Station. Text updates will appear automatically below; there is no need to reload the page. Follow us on Twitter.
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Probe into crash of ESA lander recommends more checks on ExoMars descent craft
Artist’s concept of the Schiaparelli lander with its parachute deployed. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab Investigators who studied the crash of the European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli lander on Mars last year have recommended more stringent testing and computer modeling before the launch of a joint European-Russian landing craft in 2020 to avoid a repeat of the mistakes…
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Gravitational wave testbed repurposed as comet dust detector
In the final months of Europe’s LISA Pathfinder mission, scientists have found an unexpected use for the trailblazing testbed for a future gravitational wave observatory by tracking the tiny dings made by microscopic particles that strike the spacecraft in deep space, exploiting the impacts to learn about the population of dust grains cast off by…
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Brexit raises question mark over UK’s role in some European space projects
SSTL engineers working in Guildford, England, test a navigation payload for Europe’s Galileo program. Credit: SSTL The future participation of major segments of Britain’s space industry in Europe’s Galileo navigation system and Copernicus environmental network, two multibillion-dollar flagship programs with dozens of satellites, is sure to be a significant part of negotiations as the UK…
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Italian radar satellite, European exoplanet telescope to launch on Soyuz next year
File photo of a Soyuz launch from French Guiana in 2015. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – S. Martin The Italian government has decided to launch two next-generation radar reconnaissance satellites on Soyuz and Vega rockets from French Guiana, and a European Space Agency telescope to study the structures of planets around…
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Rosetta’s comet shows scars from swing through inner solar system
This series of before-and-after views show the area of the Aswan cliff, which collapsed in July 2015 in conjunction with a strong outburst of gas and dust, seen by Rosetta in the long-range view at center. The same boulder is circled in all images to guide the eye when viewing the scene from different orientations.…
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Europe’s ExoMars spacecraft begins lowering its orbit
Artist’s concept of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, a Russian-launched, European-built spacecraft that arrived at Mars in October, is starting to dip into the upper reaches of the red planet’s atmosphere in a year-long “aerobraking” campaign place the observatory in the right position to hunt for methane,…
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Photos: Vega rocket vaults off launch pad
Firing off the launch pad with more than a half-million pounds of thrust, a Vega rocket soared into space Monday night from French Guiana with Europe’s Sentinel 2B environmental satellite. The 98-foot-tall (30-meter), four-stage rocket, powered by Italian and Ukrainian propulsion, took off at 10:49:24 p.m. local time in French Guiana (0149:24 GMT; 8:49:24 p.m.…
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Environmental sentinel launched from French Guiana
The Vega rocket took off from the Guiana Space Center at 10:49 p.m. French Guiana time Monday. Credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace – Photo Optique Video du CSG – G. Barbaste A European environmental satellite rode a solid-fueled Vega launcher from a tropical spaceport at the edge of the Amazon jungle into polar orbit Monday night, adding a…